747 Hunting... My Favourite Pastime.

"The natural habitat of the 747 is at large airports with likely 15+ Starbucks' and moving sidewalks. When observing the 747 you should camouflage yourself to blend in with luggage or food crates because the 747 spooks easily. The main predator of the 747 is the small but lethal F22 Raptor. For protection the 747 will often dump everyone's luggage mid flight to distract the F22 Raptor while it escapes into the ash clouds over Iceland." -Harri (aka The Tall Estonian)

I have a thing for the Boeing 747.  It is, hands down, my favourite airplane.  Even the ridiculously large A380 cannot compete with the B747 for my affections.

I had a flight out of YYZ last month, and spent some time roaming around Terminal 3 in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the B747.  Unfortunately, security weren't so keen on my wandering around the international gates.  They sent me packing.  So I sat at my own gate, feeling rather disappointed, until a B747 Cargo taxied right past us!  It was quite far away, but I was still pretty happy to see one - it had been a very long time since I had seen one on the ground.  The other Flight Attendant I dragged around Terminal 3 was somewhat less impressed.

Naturally, a few weeks later one lands in YOW.  I'd had an awful day at work, and took a tour past the airport, and there it was.  An instant mood lifter.  The President of China was visiting, and parked his B747 right outside the airport employee parking lot.  Naturally I didn't have my camera.  The following photographs were taken by Ian McCord, who was kind enough to forward them to me for my blog!

 Ian has an impressive photography collection, primarily related to trains, but he has a good selection of aviation photographs as well.  Some of his pictures can be seen at :
http://s839.photobucket.com/home/OCRR4204/index
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71639059@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocrr4204


Thanks again for the pictures, Ian!